Trump’s former surgeon general says maintaining a medical license is essential to his position. That means Trump candidate Casey doesn’t have it.
Trump chooses influencer doctor Casey’s means as surgeon general
US President Donald Trump has been chosen by Dr. Casey, a health entrepreneur and wellness influencer, as the US surgeon general.
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- The means are not practitioners and do not have an active medical license.
- Adams pointed to the legal obligation of the surgeon general to serve as vice admiral of the U.S. Public Health Services Committee.
WASHINGTON – Dr. Jerome Adams, a former US surgeon general, during President Donald Trump’s first term, raised questions about the qualifications of the Post’s new Trump candidate, Casey Means, as he insisted that the surgeon general must maintain a medical license to fulfill his job duties.
The means are not practitioners and do not have an active medical license.
Adams outlined his position in a May 22nd post on X without mentioning by name. Adams acknowledged that explicit federal law does not require a surgeon general to be a licensed physician. However, he pointed to the legal obligations of the surgeon general, who serves as vice-admiral of the U.S. Public Health Services Committee, a unified service of federal health professionals.
To be commissioned as a PHSCC officer, a physician must maintain a current, valid medical license in addition to completing a one-year medical residence or another accredited graduate medical program.
Adams said that PHSCC qualifications are “implicitly (and legally) essential.”
She has been scrutinizing her lack of medical licenses since Trump was appointed as a surgeon general on May 7th as a 37-year-old Stanford University-educated wellness influencer. The Oregon medical license expired in 2019 and was transferred to inert in January 2024.
Means dropped out of the five-year medical residency program as an ENT doctor a few months ago. However, she appears to still meet the PHSCC requirements that doctors have a year of graduate education.
“The position of the surgeon general as a reliable public health authority and physician is critically anticipated, in addition to implicit legal requirements,” Adams wrote.
He compared the qualification to the Army General Assembly “minimum qualifications to serve the army,” and then was promoted to lead other troops bound by the same standards.
“This is by no means a personal criticism of the candidate, but it is a clarification for the integrity of the PHSCC that I was honored to be blessed and guided,” he added. “The failure to maintain these requirements not only undermines the mission and reliability of the service, but also ended because PH and HHS refused to be commissioned or promoted or failed to meet these legal standards in lawsuits from others.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump eavesdropped on the measures after retracting the first pick of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a contributor to Fox News Medical.
A close alliance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Means, Health and Human Services, is an advocate for metabolic health and chronic disease prevention, and supports large-scale social media. Trump praises Kennedy’s means of bringing America healthy again, and “the perfect ‘Maha’ qualification.”
But the measures attracted scrutiny from medical professionals over her background, including activist Laura Rumer, who is Trump’s influential voice, and rage from some on the far right. Rumer accused him of “the lack of medical licenses and having “huggers of history of the Marxist tree.”
Anesthesiologist and former Indiana state health committee member, Adams served as Trump’s sole surgeon general in his first term from 2017 to 2021. After leaving the White House, Adams joined Purdue University as executive director of the Community Health Enhancement and Learning Center.
Reach Joey Garrison with X @joeygarrison.
